


not gods or even heroes

by bleedcolor



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Altered Mental States, Inspired by Flowers for Algernon, M/M, the author may or may not know what she's actually doing here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-09
Updated: 2012-09-16
Packaged: 2017-11-13 20:53:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bleedcolor/pseuds/bleedcolor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he is eleven, and then twelve, Tony Stark spends six months in a coma following a traumatic brain injury.  Doctors tell his parents that, if he wakes up, he will never fully recover.  When he wakes up, Tony doesn't build anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was partly inspired by Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. That being said, it includes depictions of mental disability and various character reactions and responses to that. I.E. Tony deals with less than average intelligence in this fic and this shapes who he is and who he becomes. Other characters responses (both positive and negative) will also be included throughout the course of the fic. If you feel this may bother you, this may not be the fic for you.
> 
> Title from Daniel Keyes quote:
> 
> "I was seeing them clearly for the first time - not gods or even heroes, but just two men worried about getting something out of their work." --Flowers for Algernon
> 
> Many thanks to marinarusalka for the beta and tumblr friends (you know who you are) for various read-throughs and putting up with a ton of whining. All remaining mistakes are my own.

    Tony Stark builds his first circuit board at age four and his first engine at six.  When he is eleven, Tony is given an award that he can't remember the name of and doesn't care about.  It's not the first, and when he wraps his fingers around its heavy base he assumes it won't be the last.  Howard Stark promises he will be there to see Tony recieve the award.  He is not.      

    His mother suggests a celebratory stop for ice cream.  Tony shrugs and takes Howard's usual seat in the back of their towncar.  Even when he's there, Howard never looks out the window and never seems to care that Tony would like to.  Tony and his mother never do get their ice cream.    
      
    A few blocks away from the Convention Center where the Award Ceremony was held, another car flies through a redlight and slams into the Stark car at 65 miles an hour.  Maria Stark walks away without a scratch.  Howard Stark, officials speculate, would have been killed if he had been in the car, in his usual seat.  The debris that flies through the vehicle on impact likely would have decapitated someone of his height and build.    
      
    When he is eleven, and then twelve, Tony Stark spends six months in a coma following a traumatic brain injury.  Doctors tell his parents that, if he wakes up, he will never fully recover.  When he wakes up, Tony doesn't build anything.

 

~

  
        There were things that Tony liked. 

    He liked the feel of summer grass between his toes while the warm sun beat down on his face.  He liked rainstorms and the soft, dry feel of paper underneath his fingertips.  He liked long mornings in bed, huddled down under warm blankets and clean sheets.  He liked blustery days in winter, when he had to put on  his coat and gloves and a scarf before he could go out.    
      
    The wind would blow his hair into his eyes, those days, and it itched and tickled, but Tony couldn't help but laugh when he looked out at the world through short, dark streaks.  When he came inside out of the cold, his mother would smile and smooth his hair back from his face with warm fingers, even if it had been snowing and he tracked wet footprints through the house because he'd forgotten to leave his boots by the door, _again_.  
      
    There was nothing that Tony liked more than spending time with his mother.  On sunny days she would sit with him in the garden and read to him from a book or, even better, one of his old Captain America comics.  She would use funny voices for different characters and always let him read along over her shoulder and never complained about turning back a page if he was going too slowly.

     Sundays, they would go to church and Tony would hum along with the songs that he remembered.  He didn't always like sitting still for so long, but his mother would always listen to the man at the front with a solemn expression, nodding along or occasionally smiling when she agreed with something he said.  Tony liked some of his stories, but thought he had some funny ideas, too.  They always left promptly after the service, never wandering around to speak with the other church-goers.  Tony wondered if maybe the others didn't like them.  
      
    Sometimes, as a special treat when things were good, he helped his mother make cookies and they ate them warm out of the oven, trading smiles and teasing about the flour everywhere.  At the end of the day, his mother would tuck him into bed and brush a kiss against his forehead.  If he woke up from a bad dream she would smile and stroke his hair until he fell asleep again.  When she was in a really good mood she'd spend the day singing him songs that made him laugh, silly songs about little blue men and old women who swallowed flies.  They always made Tony laugh.  
  
    His mother never laughed at him and rarely scolded him.  She never got angry at him the way his father did.  Mostly, if Tony had messed up again, she just looked sad and carefully explained what he'd done to upset her.  She tried to explain how he could keep from doing it again, but sometimes he forgot.  He hated it when his mother looked sad, but he couldn't seem to keep it from happening.    
      
    The worst times were when he'd say something that he thought would make her happy and she would look away and bite her lips, like it would keep the sadness from escaping.  When he'd told her he missed her so much when she was gone, working or accompanying his father, that he was lonely, when she wasn't there with him, he thought it would make her happy.  Tony was always glad to hear she'd missed him when she was gone.  Instead, he thought she was going to cry.  Then she'd found Pepper.  
  
    Tony liked Pepper.  His mother said that Pepper was for both of them, that she'd gone to school to help his mother with her "good works," but Tony thought his mother was gone just as much as ever, maybe more.  He still missed his mother when she was gone, but it was easier, with Pepper there.  
  
    Pepper wasn't as good at reading aloud with all the funny voices, and she always went too fast for him to follow along, but some afternoons she would kick off her shoes and stretch out beside him on the floor so they could color pictures together. Sometimes, she would even let her hair down and it woud swing over her shoulder, the perfect mix of orange and red.  He wished there were crayons that color, but there weren't.  Not even in the box that his mother had specially made for him.  
  
    If anyone could find a way to get a crayon the color of Pepper's hair, Tony thought his father could.  He even thought about asking his father, every once in a while.  He could never quite work up the daring, every time he considered it: offering to color his father a picture, for a special crayon.  He remembered drawing his father a picture, a long time ago.  But that was before the accident.  Before the accident he'd drawn a robot, careful straight lines in a bright mess of color.  (When he'd found it crumpled up in his father's study, he'd painstakingly smoothed the wrinkles out of the paper, then carefully pinned it up in his bedroom.)  
  
     _Then_ , he'd built the robot, could still feel the wrench slipping and banging his knuckles if he thought about it very carefully.  _Now_ , he couldn't remember how to build a robot and the robot he'd already built had been thrown into the wall one evening, while his father had shouted at him for something he'd messed up, _again_.  His mother hadn't let him keep the pieces of his robot.  And his father...  His father had liked him a lot more, before.  
  
    Still, Tony liked to color and he liked Pepper and her hair.  Sometimes, he liked Pepper so much that he dreamed they'd eventually kiss and get married, like the shows on the television said you were supposed to.  When they got a ride to the coffee shop he liked best and Pepper made sure the drive stopped a few blocks away so they could walk a little, then bought him his favorite hot chocolate... Well, Tony was sure that kissing probably wasn't as gross as it looked and he could handle it, if it meant that Pepper would always be this nice to him.  
  
    He worried sometimes, though, that Pepper didn't like him as much as he liked her.  Every now and then, when she didn't know he was looking, she would sigh and slump in her seat, looking as tired and sad as his mother.  He knew that, unlike his mother, she didn't have to stay.  The Starks had seen help come and go throughout the years and Tony understood, mostly, that some people didn't like spending time with them.  
  
     Pepper didn't whisper to anyone or pinch him when he'd done something wrong, but he'd caught her watching a home video of him from _before_ on the television once.  In those moments when Pepper didn't know he was looking, Tony was hoping she didn't wish he could still build robots, like his father did.  He didn't seem to smile much, in those old videos and he liked smiling.  
  
    So maybe it was just as well he didn't want to kiss Pepper, not really, because she probably didn't want to kiss him and Tony didn't know what you were supposed to do with a wife, not really.  He supposed it was enough just to not be lonely anymore, but Captain America didn't have a wife and someday Tony was going to be an adventurer, just like Cap.  He couldn't bring Pepper along with him, unless a wife was really just like a side-kick.  If that were the case, he could be Cap and Pepper could be Bucky and they really could travel the world together, fighting bad guys.  Tony liked the thought of that much more than kissing Pepper, anyway.  
  
    Sometimes, when he thought of them, Tony wished he could write down all the things he liked.  The list would be pages and pages long, he thought, and he would list all of his favorite things.  In his mind he would start listing the easy things, like kittens, crayons, and chocolate cake, but eventually he got distracted from his list by something--a new like, a dislike, something he'd forgotten and knew he'd forgotten, but still couldn't recall.  

    Thoughts were slippery for Tony and he could never hold onto them the way he wanted.  And, so, Tony wished he could write the list down.  He tried, now and again, but by the time he'd written a few lines, his hand was cramped and his head ached from the effort of it, the words and spelling sliding slickly away from him as he labored to write them out on paper.  
      
    The frustration of not being able to write threatened to choke him sometimes, jumbled in among the countless items of another long list.  There were a lot of things that Tony couldn't do.  For the most part, though, he didn't think about those things.  Often, he didn't remember to be upset about them.  Instead, Tony lived in the moment and the things he liked.  Tony Stark was _happy_.


	2. Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wishes, as he weighs the words in his mouth, rolling them slowly over his tongue like marbles, that he hadn't asked anything at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was partly inspired by Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. That being said, it includes depictions of mental disability and various character reactions and responses to that. I.E. Tony deals with less than average intelligence in this fic and this shapes who he is and who he becomes. Other characters responses (both positive and negative) will also be included throughout the course of the fic. If you feel this may bother you, this may not be the fic for you.
> 
> Title from Daniel Keyes quote:
> 
> "I was seeing them clearly for the first time - not gods or even heroes, but just two men worried about getting something out of their work." --Flowers for Algernon
> 
> From the comments I received last chapter, I'm going to guess that this chapter will veer off from where some of you expected it to go. I hope, however, that this isn't disappointing (and know that I'm intrigued by what some of you said and may be exploring those options in another fic).

    The day his father died, Tony can tell you, was a Tuesday.  He knows, because he asked Pepper (but he has to ask more than once, because he can't always remember).  He learned new words the day his father died, though he didn't understand them.  At night, after he learns that his father is gone, that he is never coming back, Tony whispers them to himself in the dark. _Killed on impact.  Tampering.  Brake lines._   If he'd been more patient, he might have learned a few more things, but when he had asked what 'brake lines' were, the talking around him stopped and his mother sent him to his room with tears in her eyes.  He wishes, as he weighs the words in his mouth, rolling them slowly over his tongue like marbles, that he hadn't asked anything at all.

    There are very few people that Tony recognizes at the funeral.  The man from his mother's church stands at a podium in front of the crowd and speaks to everyone.  He talks about God and heaven and peace.  Tony thinks it's funny that you have to die to get to heaven.  When the man is done speaking, his mother squeezes Tony's hand and steps up to the podium to give her own speech.  Tony asked, when he saw his mother carefully writing out her notes with a trembling hand, if he could talk at the funeral.  His mother had assured him he didn't need to.  As she speaks, she tells the crowd that his father was a good man, that he worked hard for all he had and that he tried to make life better for others.  Tony looks at the closed lid of the coffin and wonders about this man he's learning about.

    Three days later his father makes headlines for the last time: _Stark Industries Willed to Reclusive Heir_.  Tony doesn't understand at all and, eventually, no one tries to explain it to him anymore.

~

  
    Tony doesn't think it's such a bad thing his father is gone.  When he tries to say as much to his mother, she looks horrified and he ducks his head and falls silent with the knowledge that, yet again, he's upset her.  It's not that he isn't sad his father is dead.  He knows this means that he will never be able to spend time with him, the way he spends time with his mother.  He knows that this means his father will never smile at him or say he's proud, the way fathers on t.v. or in books do.  He knows it and it hurts, a small, hard pain in the center of his chest when he thinks about it for too long.

    Still, Tony doesn't think it's such a bad thing, because there are no more rough hands shoving him back when he does something wrong while trying to help.  There are no more cold stares and snapped curses at the dinner table if he spills, no more arguments in the middle of the night  when his parents think he's asleep.  There are no more slurred disappointments or apologies and wracking sobs that frighten him when he wakes up to find his father's shadow looming over his bed while the rest of the house is dark and quiet.  But as the days pass and his mother doesn't smile as much, has to leave the house more often, tight lines bracketing her mouth, when she has heated arguments into the telephone reciever that leave her red-faced and shouting, "You can't _do_ this, Stane!" before slamming the headset down into the cradle, Tony realizes that, _maybe_ , it's not such a good thing, either.

    Stark Industries is falling down.  Tony understands that the building itself isn't crumbling to pieces, but it's the only way he can wrap his mind around the words floating around in the quiet of the mansion.  _Restructuring.  Take-over.  Corporate mutiny._   The company is the one thing his father loved unwaveringly.  His mother tries to explain it to him before she leaves, but comprehension dangles over his head like a startled bird, flying close and then swooping away when he reaches for it.  In the days of his mother's absence it is the only surety he can cling to: Stark Industries is falling down.  Somehow, Tony knows it's his fault.

    When his mother returns it's like his father  has died all over again.  

"There's nothing we can do but wait," she tells Tony and gently ruffles his hair. 

    The house settles further into quietness and he feels like he can hardly breathe under the weight of it.  He is afraid of upsetting his mother.  She has no time for stories or even smiles anymore, instead poring over files in his father's study, day after day.  Even her own work falls to the side, Pepper ducking out in the afternoons to take care of his mother's business and leaving Tony to fend for himself.

    His mother doesn't find a solution in his father's study; instead, it comes to her in a strange package delivered one afternoon while Pepper is still out.  The postman leaves it on their front step and Tony dutifully drags it inside.  It doesn't look like any package they've ever recieved before, all black, instead of wrapped in brown paper, and stamped with a funny looking bird on the front.  Tony wants to know what's inside as soon as he sees it, but he doesn't want to disturb his mother and, by the time she comes out of the office he's forgotten all about the package.  It sits by the entryway for two days before his mother finds it.

    She scolds him half-heartedly for not telling her about it before she carries it into the office, Tony trailing along behind her with renewed curiosity.  When she finally opens it, he's surprised by how little is in the package, considering its size.  There's a small bottle like one he's seen before in his father's lab in the basement.  It's called something else, he knows, but he can't recall what and before he can think on it too long he's distracted by the remaining contents of the package: a thick folder with red letters stamped across the front. _Classified_. He quietly sounds out the letters the way his mother painstakingly taught him to and she rewards him with a startled look, like she'd forgotten his presence.  

"Go play, Tony," she says.  "This is important and I need to focus."

    Tony retreats from the office, feeling hurt and a little ashamed.  He knows his mother is busy, knows that she has important work to do, that she is trying to save his father's company.  Somewhere in the back of his mind a small voice adds, _she would be fine, if it wasn't for you_.  So he wanders through the mansion a bit aimlessly until he finds Pepper in the library.  When he asks her to read to him, she begins to narrate from the book in her hands, something about a man in a cave that Tony would find interesting any other day, but doesn't soothe the jagged edge of his mother's words the way he wants.  He retrieves a ragged anthology from a shelf and hands it to Pepper.  She automatically turns to his favorite story and clears her throat to begin reading.

"No," he says after a moment's consideration.  "The one where Cap saves the man."

"I thought you didn't like that one, Tony." She says uncertainly, her fingers worrying the edges of the pages.

    It's true, he doesn't.  It's a story about how, on a break from needing to save the world, Captain America finds himself saving the life of a man who had previously been on a bad path.  He's been cheating on his wife and neglecting his son, spending all his time at work and being unhappy with his life.  When Cap saves his life the man is so grateful he vows to turn it all around and he does, the comic ending with a caption of him and his family smiling and saying, "Thanks, Captain America!" It was a story that never failed to make Tony sad because Captain America couldn't come and help his father.  

"The one where Cap saves the man." He repeats softly, sitting down next to Pepper.

    Tony doesn't want to be sad, doesn't want to hear the story that never fails to remind him of what he doesn't have, but he wants to _understand_.  He thinks of his father, as Pepper reads, knows that his father will never be there.  He thinks of his mother, slowly pulling away from him, too busy now that his father is gone.  He wonders if he will ever have anything permanent, anything just for him.

"Tony?" Pepper's voice intrudes on his thoughts, raised in concern and he starts, turning to her in surprise.

    Pepper.  Pepper has been gone more, taking care of his mother's foundation now that she has no time, but when she is at the mansion she is with Tony, spending time with him, taking care of him.  He remembers his mother's words, when Pepper first came, that she was there for him.   With hardly a thought more, Tony screws up his courage and kisses Pepper, a hard, quick bump and mash of lips that confuses him.  He'd thought that kissing was supposed to be nice.  Pepper is stiff beneath him.  When he tries to kiss her again she jerks away.

"Marry me, Pepper!" He pleads, instead, throwing his arms around her and hiding his face against her shoulder.  "I'll be good, I promise, and you can stay with me forever.  I won't be lonely and I'll be good. I'll make you happy."

"Oh, Tony." Something warm and wet drops into his hair, then again, and Pepper is pulling away with a squeeze to his shoulder.  "I'm sorry, Tony.  I'm so sorry, but I can't."

    The sharp click of her heels echoes in the library as she hurries for the door.  Tony spends the night on the library couch, miserable and alone.

    When Tony wakes up, two nights later, to a shadow looming over his bed in the dead of night, he thinks that, maybe, he's waking up from a long dream.  After a moment he realizes the shadow is too small and slender to be his father.  He makes a sleepy, inquisitive noise and a warm hand reaches out to brush his hair back from his forehead.  His mother sighs in the dark.

"I loved your father," she tells Tony softly.  "But I will never forgive him for not loving you the way he should have."

~

  
    When Tony Stark is twenty-one he wakes up from nine years of dreaming.

    When Tony wakes up he remembers.  He remembers the time between and being lost, always lost.  He remembers that Pepper leaves and does not come back.  He remembers wondering if she has died, like his father, but being too afraid of the answer to ask.  What he remembers best is the words his mother whispers in the dark, " _...I will never forgive him for not loving you the way he should have_." He remembers the words she doesn't say: "I will never forgive him for making me choose this."  He remembers the way her hand shakes and the needle shines in the dim light pouring in from the hallway.

    When he wakes up, there is nothing but a wall of endless pain.  Tony closes his eyes and sleeps again.

    When Tony Stark is twenty-one he spends three days in a coma.  When he wakes up, he builds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will be trying (very trying) to update this at least once a week. I may or may not succeed, and pre-emptively ask for your forgiveness if I don't. The first several chapters will be from Tony's p.o.v. and span through the Iron Man movies to the Avengers. Where we go from there is anyone's guess, but I promise that Cap will eventually show up.


End file.
